The business group is calling on chancellor George Osborne to radically reform public services in this month’s spending review. It says increasing shared services could save Whitehall and local authorities up to £600m a year by 2020.
It also wants the Government to integrate social care spending into the NHS budget and identify contracts and work-streams that could be outsourced to deliver savings.
Read more: GB: Stop automatic pay rises and make shared services 'the norm', says CBI
Rob Miller is breaking new ground in local government ICT. Last month he became head of a joint ICT shared service for Sutton and Kingston councils in outer south London. The joint post is the first appointment of its kind in the capital but is a role that is expected to become increasingly common as more local authorities move to share services and save money.
Just as Miller took up his appointment, which came with a salary of around £100,000, the tri-boroughs of Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea launched their own drive to find a chief information officer (CIO) to transform ICT to create a "single seamless high-quality [ICT] service" across all three boroughs. Holding an annual budget of £40m and responsible for a team of 123, the appointment is being described as "truly career defining" by Hays Executive, which is managing the recruitment.
Read more: GB: How to get ahead in... local government shared services ICT
The briefing: Shared ICT services: more than meets the eye? points out that sharing services ranks high on the agenda of possible responses by councils to austerity, and that many have been established.
However, a large number end before delivering the anticipated benefits, and for others the path to implementation can be far from smooth. These points are illustrated in the two case studies described in the briefing.
Hertfordshire residents with care, mobility or other specialist needs can now find out about support available to them from the council and private providers 24/7, thanks to a new website launched in May. The eMarketplace is Hertfordshire county council's new one-stop shop for residents and enables users to search for services and goods, compare prices, contact providers directly and rate those they have used.
This is the latest innovation to come out of a shared services partnership between Hertfordshire and Serco, which aims to broaden and deepen services as well as deliver cost efficiencies. The contract builds on Serco's long-standing relationship with the council to deliver back office savings in areas such as finance, HR and property. However, an extra clause on 'innovation' has, two years into the contract, begun to deliver added value to Hertfordshire's adult social care.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is looking for a partner to provide it with up to £78 million worth of hosting services, as part the department’s Future IT Sourcing Programme (FITS) to replace a number of legacy contracts.
The department’s current major ICT contracts were negotiated prior to the creation of the MoJ, and as such are broadly aligned to business units, rather than “supporting economic, standard and integrated services across the MoJ”, according to the online contract notice.
Read more: GB: Ministry of Justice plans £78m hosting agreement to replace legacy systems